Linda's Meta-learning Journal

I am curled up in a ball on the floor banging hard with my fists. I know that if I get up I will hurt her really badly and I don't want that to happen. If I touch her I might not be able to stop until she is dead. My rage fills the whole world, everything has shrunk to this small area of floor that I can see my fist smashing into. Beside me I hear a voice. Someone is kneeling down next to me, not too close, but near enough for me to know they are there. From a long way off I hear
"Do you need some help there Mrs T?"
"Yes, please Mrs H."
There is someone kneeling on the other side of me too , and the classroom is empty now.
"Can you get up J or do you need some help?"
"I am going to kill her" I hear my voice. It sounds strange and distant, like it belongs to someone else.
There are firm hands on each of my elbows. Mrs T and Mrs H have moved really close to me now. It feels safe. Slowly I find myself moving onto my knees.
"Come on J you are doing really well. Up on to your feet next."
And so I am... not really sure how I got here. Now I am walking with Mrs H, she's put her arm round my shoulder and is holding my elbow. She's holding me close. I feel odd, numb now, nearly crying.
"Mrs B, J needs to stay here for a little while. I'll just be round the corner if you need me J."
Now I am in Mrs B's room on the big cushions. I feel sleepy and I have a dry mouth. I'm going to stay here till I feel better. My hands are sore.
Team Teach positive handling course

I spent part of today taking photographs of some children from yr5 dressed up as characters from Hansel and Gretel. I'd dearly love to post some of them here but images of other people's children are really not ok. I might see if I can by obscure their faces and post them. The photos really are delightful.
The interesting thing was that two of the children are quite tough nuts and consider themselves (at 10) too old for playing. However provide them with good costumes, the role play room and a story that they know really well and what happens? Instead of just taking a group photo of the 3 children I end up taking 10 shots of them as they act out the whole story which they do with great attention to detail and once again (like yesterday's reception children) total concentration. So what might have taken 10 minutes took 30 and 3 children and one TA had a 'delightful' time.
So what did I learn?

That 10 years old still need to play.
Well, put like that it seems obvious but easy to forget when they behave like teenagers most of the time.

That it might be worth taking small groups of them into the role play area next year when we re-do this block of work and build this play into it.
I talked this through with my yr5 teacher and she agreed that this would be a valuable addition to the project.

These insights have made me think about how I want to write about informal learning in Report 5. Tom's comment yesterday encouraged me as well. I think I want to write about the way that my play is important for my learning too. It is not just for children. I need to look at this more deeply, to start to formalise my ideas about learning through play and what that means for me as an adult. Not sure where this is going but it it at least going somewhere at last!! Time to look for some literature perhaps?

I was watching the reception class during role-play today. I was asked to stand in at very short notice and I haven't worked in reception for nearly 3 years. They were being fire fighters, receptionists, and people being rescued. It was very interesting watching the concentration with which they played out these roles. They were engrgrossed and enjoying themselves but this was definitely a serious business. Maybe this sort of play is a combination of acting out things we would not otherwise be able to do (like be a 5yr old fire fighter), making sense of adult behaviour and building a more complete picture of the world and their place in it. I'd be hard put to say exactly what they learned today but I am sure they were learning. I am also sure that I was learning to by watching them at play and providing input when they needed it.

This is my problem with the informal learning stuff for report 5. Incidents like this happen all the time in my job. Sudden insights are parr for the course. So how can I possibly list them all? And where am I supposed to get evidence for them?

Significant Learning

Significant learning	Telling into Writing project	Team teach safe handling course	3d display course	Water safety course	Using Ecologger
Artifact	Hansel and Gretel resource pack	certificate	display photo collection	certificate	'Teacher-friendly' instructions
Reflection	to do	mind map	to do	to do	to do

So this is the second part of LA2. The first part was to upload the artifacts to the file cabinet but I have mostly put them on my web pages and linked to them here.

Next I need to do the reflections. Wonder which techniques to use?

This might be the last entry for a few days and if I am really good for more than a week. I'm not sure I'll manage that. My last week off I managed to update my blog twice and log on to First Class fairly often.

I got 83% for my Action Enquiry and I am really happy about that. It is my lowest mark so far but I decided that I needed to spend less time fussing at this stage of the degree and so did not do all my usual last minute revisions. I might aim for 75% next time:-)

I started going out everyday at lunchtime a few weeks ago and it has made a real difference to my day. I found a place to walk by the canal very near to school. Although it is almost in the city centre it feels quite tranquil. Mostly used by people from the local estate as a traffic free route to the city shops, it feels a really safe space.
On with the Learning list:

Monitoring the buddy system
attended meeting with cluster, feedback meeting with head, wrote plan for monitoring system,designed questionnaires for the current buddies, made lists of questions for learning mentor and lunchtime supervisors, research into other school's methods of running the system, attending and writing up the yr5 training sessions. Writing a short report for feeding back to cluster.

Year 5 Informal Learning

Ecologger

Adhd Links and research

dyslexia research

space links

springboard maths

Year 3 Informal Learning

dyspraxia research

dyslexia research

speech and language: meetings with speech therapist

So how best to list informal learning?

In my job as I have such a varied role it is hard to work out if I am constantly learning or hardly learning anything!

I'm going to split it into my 3 job roles I think:

Research Assistant

Magical spelling
On line literature search, statistical analysis of the spelling mistakes made by class in optional SATs, research into learning styles, one to one training on Magical Spelling method, planning and recording sessions, investigating action research methods, reporting back to the cluster, giving feedback session and demonstration to staff, helping set up new spelling policy for school.

Telling into Writing
4 meetings with literacy co-ordinator responsible for project, improving on-line search techniques (including investigating new search engines such asKartoo.com), investigating copywrite law and its implications for the visual aids required for the project, working out best gestures to use for teaching the class a narrative poem, using the experience gleaned from this to decide on the best gestures for the Hansel and Gretal story, working as a TA during the two week block whilst constantly reviewing the techniques being used with class teacher, designing evaluation questionnaires for staff and pupils, working with small groups on computers to faccilitate their production of individual stories told from the viewpoint of either Handsel or Gretal, investigating ways of putting these stories on-line, reporting back to the cluster on the project.

That's enough for now, I'll put the stuff about Monitoring the Buddy System later.

This is my list of training this year for LA1.2

Formal training attended:

A one day overview of ELS & FLS

A lecture on Collaborative Working Practices

A twilight on Literacy and Preferred Learning Styles

An INSET day on Positive Handling

A twilight on Behaviour Management

2 hr course on behaviour strategies for use in after-school environments.

Devolopmental Dyspraxia (lecture)

Problems of short term memory transfer/processing (lecture)

Training on “Telling into Writing”project.

workshop on Children on the Autistic Spectrum.

Dyslexia friendly schools lecture

supported reading course at beacon school

Health and safety for swimming course

supported writing course at beacon school

3d display in the classroom -one day course

Team Teach training day

PAL training day

And training that I have been involved in giving:

a four hour training programme for other SSAs to learn to provide the Better Reading Partners scheme.

retraining of SSAs in the administration of the school reading scheme. This involved a two hour workshop on how to use the scheme in combination with ‘real books’ to provide a varied learning experience tailored to the individual child.

Healthy Schools cluster meetings to share best practice

I found this on on- line learning environmentson Vix MA site and thought it was an interesting view on how Firstclass works for on-line learning. I'm surprised that it is used by notschool as it does not seem to me to be very user-friendly. I find it a bit dull to be honest, not playfull at all.

Some one was saying today that their ideal would be a community that offerred a variety of formats so that you could choose. People could see the messages in their home mail boxes, use wikis and blogs, web sites, all manner of ways of accessing the conversations. I am having real trouble wondering what that would be like in practice. I like the idea of it but I wonder how productive that varied sort of environment would be. Would it still feel like a community? I am not sure. How does all this relate to play and delight? Well it seems to relate more to the lack of it on FC if I'm honest. Unless of course you count the 'delight' of watching pillars of the CU posting about their prowess at playing computer games that depict the bloody and violent deaths of innocent penguins! :-)

Ah well, I'll be on holiday this time next week and that should indeed be delightful. I can hardly wait. :-)

So here I am on a Friday night and the most interesting thing I can think of to do is work. I can't even go for a walk as it is pouring with rain. I have done my initial pdp but I can't say I'm very pleased with it. Never mind it is done!

Now to do a list of all my learning in the workplace over the last year. The courses are easy, it's the informal stuff that is harder. The informal stuff of course far outweighs the courses I've attended. At least since October there has been my Learning Journal and I suppose I'd better trawl through my blog as well as I'm sure there is stuff in here too. Still it is just a list for LA1. LA2 though is where the certificates, evaluations, reflections etc. start to come into it.

I'm going to try to get both more or less finished this weekend. Then I'll start looking for some literature refs and quotes from FC etc. to go into the final stitching.

I need to get as much as I can done this week so that I can go away at half term and not work at all. Well, I suppose the Student Reps F2F meeting at Ultralab might count as work but it is only one day.